How beneficial is compound interest actually when financial?
If you own bad companies and/or dont believe in diversification (how many stocks must you have in a portfolio in order to insulate it from unsystematic risk?), then you are probably clueless to a proper understanding of risk and may subject yourself to bad losses or a complete loss loss. So compound interest may have little value since you are losing all the time. Compound interest is absolutely valuable where you have a long term trend of assets going up. That said, is this a good time to invest? Well, the inverted yield curve suggest a recession in the near term. Market Losses in 2000 were 49% and 2008 were 57%. So if you get clobbered by losses like that in the next couple years, compound interest is not even on the table. If you avoid major losses, compound interest is a winner.